Thread: Welcome to our Post-Constitutional America.

Originally Posted by -Lazarus-

Trigger, with respect, you're wrong about that. The inside of your car is the same as the inside of your home as far as the law sees it in most states. This was recently affirmed in many states by passage of laws regarding guns in cars that make it very similar to have a gun in your home.

Originally Posted by CivilWars

Then why are cops not allowed to search your car without consent or a warrant?

I was just playing devil's advocate.

I wasn't saying I agree either way.

Originally Posted by -Lazarus-

Honestly that's why we have the Constitution in the first place. As long as departments aren't ignoring it, that should be all we need.

That's fine, and I don't disagree, but it's not enough. Claims of rights violations are an expensive and arduous federal process. It needs to be the last in a many-layered set of constraints and remedies.

Another point: most police aren't constitutional experts. The issues are fuzzy enough for the experts. City cops can't be making decisions by asking themselves "is this Constitutional?" First off, they're not qualified. Second, it would be an operational nightmare.

Lots of people are sworn to uphold the Constitution, but almost none of them are doing it directly. They rely on other people to set up policies and procedures, and to revise them if the courts say so.


Æ

Originally Posted by dex71

What color is the sky in your World? You need to go back and do some reading. Your version of history doesn't even resemble what happened.
We went in with U.N. approval because Saddam WASN'T cooperating with U.N. inspectors.
This is the Utopia (in your mind only) we interrupted:



And Yes Trigger.....without a doubt Iraq is a better place for its average citizen. How many Kurds were gassed yesterday? How many were picked up by the secret police yesterday? How many mass graves were filled yesterday?

Saddam started the killing on DAY 1 of his reign, and didn't stop until WE stopped him. For Christ's sake, his kids were feeding people to lions for entertainment.

For Source.....This is the day Saddam took power. This is your hero being a "good boy":


He brought so much peace and stability to his country, his people tried him as a murderer and hung him like a sausage the first chance they had.

I think it has come to the point where I will just have to bow out of this conversation.

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy Note 2.

I try to think of things logically, and follow the KISS method. I also realize that most/all of our laws are based on precedence, so if we set the precedent that it is ok to stop someone because we know based on statistics that X% of people in an area are driving under the influence then what is to prevent that precedent from moving to we know Y% of brown people driving are illegal, so we have the right to stop them too. Then we know that Z% of people driving cars with small rims and crazy paint schemes are gang bangers and/or drug dealers, and thus are likely to have guns and/or drugs in their car, so it is ok to stop them.

Is that going to happen tomorrow? Of course not, but what if we went back in time to 1995 and I told you that to board a plane you would have to submit to either a scanner that showed all your goods or a body cavity search? My best bet is you would offer me some foil, yet here we are today having pissed away those freedoms in the name of "safety".

Originally Posted by Hocus Pocus

Man that's another can of worms. It's hard to argue the TSA for obvious reasons. Let me just say, if in 1995 you know terrorists were using planes to inflict damage what preventative measures would you take to try and prevent it in the future? What's a good course of action?

And therein lies the rub when discussing all of these things. We require everyone to have auto insurance, but we also have the need for uninsured motorist insurance because even though it is required not everyone does it. So do we want our freedom, which also means that bad people have more ability to do harmful things, or do we want our safety, which means many honest and law abiding citizens give up their freedom to do some basic things in a simple way. Should you and I, as law abiding citizens, be inconvenienced because there are people who do not obey the laws? Should it be against the law for me to leave my car running while I run into a convenience store when it is over 100 degrees outside? Probably not, but because we can't count on criminals to obey the legit laws we feel the need to enact laws that make law abiding citizens criminals too in order to prevent more heinous crimes.

So to your question, what would I do? I guess there isn't much that could be done that wouldn't cause as much, or more, harm than the act itself. Yes, I am saddened, as everyone is and was, by the loss of life on that tragic day, but what would have prevented it had we known that was the plan? We could infringe on airline passengers' rights a la the TSA. We could infringe on Muslims' rights by putting anyone who could potentially be a radical terrorist in some camp, or worse. We could add more armed sky marshals to flights, but then we have more "cops" preconditioned to think Muslims are terrorists, so odds are we would have innocent Muslims or even people that may not be Muslim but have physical appearances that give the impression that they could be targeted by said cops.

My personal opinion is stiffer penalties for people who do break legit laws. I know this in and of itself does not prevent the crime from happening, but do away with all the books, magazines, TVs, and other entertainment in jails and prisons. If you infringe on the liberties of others you have your liberties taken away. You get 3 hots and a cot. PERIOD. Yes, I know, prison isn't a country club, but it also isn't much of a deterrent either seeing as how many people go right back shortly after they get out. Make prison hell, and more people would be likely to not come back, and possibly not come in the first place.

Why not just torture or Kill offenders?

Smells like more of your one-liner toll bait posts, but I'll bite.

TBH, for violent criminals I am not opposed to reducing the level of guard interaction/intervention. As it is now we go through special measures to make sure people with white skin are over here, brown skin over there, and black skin over over there. Then within those groups we take further action to make sure to segregate the skin colors by the color of clothes they wore outside, the tattoos they have, and/or the hand signals they like to make. To that I say screw you. If you valued having the freedom to choose who you got to hang out and live with then maybe you shouldn't have committed the crimes you were convicted of.

But Civil, if we allow/require different races and gangs to interact too closely in max security prisons won't there be fights and violence? I guess that is up to the criminals, but if they figure the best use of their time is in beating the crap out of each other who am I to judge?

So are we going to start implementing a 2 sentence minimum in here and take votes on what Trolls are? Last I checked this was the Drama forum, and personal insults aren't allowed, but that's as far as the line is drawn...